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ectoman writes: Opensource.com is running an interview with Jennifer Davidson of ChickTech, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create communities of support for women and girls pursuing (or interested in pursuing) careers in tech. "In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea." Portland, OR-based ChickTech is quickly expanding throughout the United States—to cities like Corvallis and San Francisco—thanks to the "ChickTech: High School" initiative, which gathers hundreds of young women for two-day workshops featuring open source technologies. "We fill a university engineering department with 100 high school girls—more girls than many engineering departments have ever seen," Davidson said. "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are."

Go to any university STEM departments and here's what you'll find (with my anecdotal evidence).

Women like science. You'll have to go to the Biology department to find them. Women like math, you'll just have to go to the Applied Math & Statistics departments to find them. Women like Computer Science. You'll just have to go to the database courses to find them.

There's a "skills gap" present in Math aptitude tests that appears in countries where the status of women is worse

This may be partially explained by the mistreatment. However, there is a giant elephant in the room of "sex equality": sports. The all-female teams are invariably weaker, than the all-male ones — and compete separately. Co-ed teams are required to have a certain number of women (2 players for a 6-member volleyball team, for example). Soccer World Cup just ended — did you see a single

I'm really not sure how sports fits into this. Yes, testosterone gives better performance in sports. Barry Bonds was fined for it. As was the Chinese women's swim team.

As far as chess, first mandatory xkcd. [xkcd.com] Another good reason is how women are treated in mostly male fields. There's very few women who play Magic: The Gathering or chess for this reason (yes, I've been to the tournies). On the other hand, more women are interested in studying academic subjects -- there must be some reason more women go t [pewresearch.org]

Or, maybe all the money and focus on getting women into college is, dare I suggest it, getting more women into college? Also, the primary and secondary education systems are heavily geared towards women, and getting worse all the time. Normal young male traits are being considered disorders that require psychoactive medication, and of course being male is 'curable' so the drugs usually just make life worse for the kids.

So, you are trying to explain the entire disparity with mistreatment by males. I don't buy it...

I follow the data. In numerous other countries, this is not the case. Again, if you have better data, please share (as I did in GP). Otherwise -- buying into the idea of female inferiority with no data to support your assertion -- is precisely the kind of prejudice I'm talking about and you are the perfect example.

What a bunch of bullshit. I know at least half a dozen girls in my town alone who regularly play this game. If they exist here, I'm certain they exist all over. Your idea of what young women participate in these days is outdated.

I actually had a business called "rent a nerd" in the early 90's when I was in my mid 20's and in great shape. I got lots of repeat calls from lonely divorced women to fix very simple "problems" with their computers. e.g. Problem: "My screen is blank!" Solution: "Turn up the brightness knob" | Problem: "My software won't load!" Solution: "You have to run the install.exe program, not the readme.txt"

If I hadn't had a girlfriend and/or a conscience at the time I would have made even more money. I did get

3 cubes are inhabited by boxes and spare equipment, the rest by people.

Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.

So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry, but I'll bet dollars against pesos that there's a perfectly reasonable, non-misogynistic reason for at least the majority of those shortages.

You're a good statistician and sociologist. Strongly persuaded by the narrow anecdote you used to support your loosely worded presumptuous conclusion. This is the quality bullshit comment systems were invented for.

You're a good statistician and sociologist. Strongly persuaded by the narrow anecdote you used to support your loosely worded presumptuous conclusion.

I know, right? Do you think CNN will hire me to do a show, or should I shoot more towards the ultra-partisan MSNBC/FOX News crowds? When it comes to BS I can make Ann Coulter look like a rank amateur.

'Course, were I to respond in a slightly less sardonic manner, I'd mention how if you're the sort of person who extrapolates someone's personal anecdote about their own officemates to imply a globally-viable statistic, well, that little bit o' idiocy is on you, not me.

So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry

Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?

My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.

Heck, when I was in school, the ratio was about the same in my classes, and seemed to drop as you went to more a

So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry

Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?

Seems about 50/50 - half are either in management or administrative roles, the rest are either developers, project coordinators, or systems designers and installers. In my department, 2/3 of the managers are women.

My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.

It does seem that tech jobs tend to have more men than women in them (sure, half the women are devs, but 80% of the men are too), but I don't believe the reasoning to be nearly as misogynistic as some of these "gurls up" organizations want us to think. It's just that most chicks don't dig coding,

And what exactly are you doing? Does he have to give you the exact "dig coding" gene and explain why it's not expressed in women before you'll stop chanting "you're talking out of your ass"? It's not exactly outrages to say that two genders that often exhibit different preferences and interests might have different preferences and interests.

Your survey of your immediate surroundings isn't very convincing in the face of much wider studies and larger data sets. Are you one of those people who doesn't believe in climate change because it's quite cool in your office?

Your survey of your immediate surroundings isn't very convincing in the face of much wider studies and larger data sets. Are you one of those people who doesn't believe in climate change because it's quite cool in your office?

Unlike the author of TFA, who doesn't even bother with facts or statistics at all, but rather predicates their entire platform on the statement "Dur, we need more gurls in tech!"

Seriously, go read TFA. It's not so much an article as an advertisement for the organization.

They say that almost 20% of the world's population is Chinese. However there are no Chinese people working in any of the offices on the same floor of the building as me. Therefore I conclude that all these so-called experts are wrong and there are in fact no Chinese people.

I abhor the use of personal resources to aid any specific group of people for any reason. People should spend their money only in ways that further my own interest, I'm too insecure to have it any other way.

my seventeen year old daughter scored a 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam. she intends on teaching High School Math. ( why she wants to go back to high school, I have yet to understand.) so in my mind, girls get to choose what they want to do just like guys do. dunno why girls don't choose geekage as much as guys do... could be the tan line possibilities.... (or not)

In my experience it's not that they can't be programmers it's that they don't WANT to be programmers. The smartest women in my family is a bio-engineer. The second smartest got an MBA (well.. y'know...we love her anyway.;) ) I've known women physicists, astro-physicists, doctors (the MD kind), veterinarians, and psychiatrists. (None in a professional capacity) All of them geeks in one way or the other but all of them HATE computers and only use them as a necessary evil. I work in IT and ha

My completely anecdotal non-scientific evidence is that girls interested in math, science, and tech were mostly discouraged by their peers. Communities to support girls and women pursuing tech are great and all, but I feel like for a lot of girls it's going to come down to one very simple question: do I get new hobbies, or do I get new friends? It wouldn't surprise me if a majority of girls choose the latter.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe things have changed since the decade or so since I was a high school student.

"These STEM majors, as with economics, begin with few women enrolling and end with even fewer graduating. This “leaky pipeline” has been somewhat puzzling, Arcidiacono said, because women enter college just as prepared as men in math and science. On average, women more eagerly spend time studying than men do, a trait that should theoretically attract women to STEM fields, which generally assign more homework."

More homework? Women should be attracted to STEM fields because they "generally assign more homework"?!

Well... THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM.

F- that... That's not at all why I wanted to go into "STEM" fields. I wanted to build s**t.

a) there's nothing special about Open Sourceb) being excited about something is not tangiblec) self-esteem is not the pointd) being a career non-profit means that you never created valuee) Oregon is full of hipsters and douches

The largely patriarchal narrative woven into the fabric of the american dream is that women are caretakers of children and roasters of turkey during holidays. Whereas the soviet union in the 1970's boasted much greater equality in the workplace in terms of female STEM headcount, the US doubled-down on rhetoric, shuffled 'in god we trust' into the pledge, and made haste to forget rosie the riveter ever existed.

We have an entire party in government that literally see women as uselessly inferior to men.

And where does that refute his point? Despite the fact that society pats women on the head by passing them a largely useless piece of paper (it's still mostly your social network that determines advancement, not your degree), we still get politicians like Akin, and the Hobby Lobby decision.

Quite frankly, GP is right, and the Troll mod is probably the work of yet another pimply MRA type.

Every country has plans to mobilize men, except maybe in Africa where they prefer to draft little boys. The socialist countries don't need any kind of registration because all citizens are already tabulated into the collective through national IDs, health insurance, welfare, etc. Though the OP's complaint is rather trivial, I'd be more outraged about the average female's tax/entitlement ratio.

How about instead of forcing women to fight against their will you just stop forcing anyone of any gender? Most first world countries don't have any kind of mandatory service.

I think you're getting confused by differences of terms.......in the US, no one is forced to fight. We have to register, but it is something that will not be used until emergencies (of course, the definition of emergency is flexible).

Most countries have some kind of registration, or provision that will allow conscription when it becomes necessary. Some countries, like Russia, South Korea and Switzerland, require actual military service. That is something different, and not what happens in the US.

"In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea."

Except, of course, for the fact that by trying to focus attention on how males and females are being treated differently where gender should be irrelevant, they are, in fact, treating the different genders differently when the notion of gender should be irrelevant, which only perpetuates the problem

The best way to deal with the problem is to just stop treating people differently based on gender in the first place... perpetuating it by treating them differently to compensate for how they may have been treated differently by others just perpetuates the problem.

Stop treating people differently sounds good, but it simply isn't going to work in almost all cases.

Assume that everybody decided to try treating people differently based on gender. There'd still be all sorts of perceptions built in, and all sorts of blind spots. There was a study of teachers in California that found they tended to call on boys a lot more than girls, and that this behavior continued (although lessened) after they'd been told about the initial results.

If it doesn't work, then study *WHY* it doesn't work.... *WHY* are people treated differently based on gender when there is no need to? Address that issue, and you solve the problem. Treating them differently to somehow compensate for how they may have already been treated differently is *STILL* treating them differently.

Instead of trying to compensate for a past that may have been less than ideal, people should concentrate on trying to make the future better than yesterday was.

"ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source"... where they encounter Richard "THAT'S FREE SOFTWARE TO YOU" Stallman , Linus Torvalds, and Theo De Raadt and vow never to touch a computer again.

I will say I'm a fan of female scientists, there are some with biochemical and chemical degrees in my family (who have long since abandoned the field for hearth and home, a decision of their own choosing), but I see a lot of men who are promoting it simply trying to make women in their own image. Maybe they are dads with only one child, daughters, which is very common now or what n

Promoting access based on sex is sexually discriminating. Whether it's men or women, for or against, it doesn't matter. Building bias into the system under the guise of promoting 'diversity' and/or 'equality' is even worse than the original discrimination it claims to fight because it adds hypocrisy to the pile.

The reality is that 'diversity' and 'equality' are mutually exclusive. To feminists, it should be the ('empowered' female run) state that decides how and when one trumps the other, building privile

Really? The women-hating Daily Fail is your source. Literally the last place you would go to find any reliable, balanced information on women's issues. Even the photo in the story was selected to show the maximum amount of boob.

The token male who suddenly appeared on the internet in April of this year, with no information to back up "his" existence, other than the listing on that page and a single article toeing ChickTech's party line? That Marcus?

Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20130529232614/http://www.chicktech.org/about-us. You'll note that doesn't go to the "Leadership Teams" page, because, according to that page's source, it was created 5/23/2014 (and updated this morning).

The litmus test is in applying the opposite logic. What would the situation be if they were promoting boys instead, and someone like yourself came along and answered feminist criticism with "but see they accept women too!" Even if they did, their primary discriminator is still the sex of the student instead of relevant discriminators, like aptitude and interest. The bottom line is you (or some other feminist) would have called someone out for saying

"While they're overwhelmingly male in structure, you're absolutely wrong in your made up assertion that they don't accept women."

Oh, no, I wouldn't say that's a problem for a reversed situation either. The society of male nurses is mostly male, for example, because they're specifically addressing concerns of male nurses. There's a natural and not-fundamentally sexist reason for that divide to have some degree of existence.

People do have a need to be concerned with their own interests.

You accuse me of hypocrisy, when the reverse you assert is entirely within acceptable bounds of anyone who isn't a tremendous misandrist. The fact th

The issue is that male focused groups are criticized for it while female groups are lauded. Sure, the society for male nurses might be mostly male, but try building a society specifically for male engineers. What happens? The SJWs come out in droves clamoring for the death of the 'patriarchy.' Meanwhile the last 50 years of new laws and social reforms lobbied for by feminists force organizations to select for women because of their sex and not their accomplishments.

Oh, yes, because that has worked so well in the past? There are still lots of ages-old prejudices and preconceptions, like e.g. women suck at anything technical and men who become nurses must be feminine gays and so on. These things do not change unless they're forcibly made to change and ignoring these things helps no one.

So by creating an environment only welcoming to one group is the way to the solution?

take any 2 groups any 2 groups separate them and have them work exclusively with people from their own group... then see how well they integrate when you combined them together... do they seem to have a prejudice against the other group? do they flock together or intermingle freely?

When one of the groups is already prejudiced against and is lacking in skills and education exactly because of this behaviour, then yes, you really do need to take steps to fix this. You can get your panties in a bunch over this all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that women are, indeed, in a position where they're not being taken seriously and where they're afraid of even getting education in these matters.

Seems to me to be a poor way to be taken seriously. It screams "we cannot compete with men so we must create our own exclusive clubs." Fear of getting an education because someone might disapprove is just pathetic.

The article doesn't actually talk about what this ChickTech is about. "According to that theory, girls tend to perform worse on tests after they've been told they'll do poorly." -- entirely a different matter. This isn't about addressing whether women do poorly or not, it's about addressing the whole premise of women even trying in the first place because of various efforts to dissuade them from it.

TFA claims that "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are." If that is true then clearly there is a problem because girls are interested but put off for some reason. At the very least it blows the argument that girls just don't like engineering out of the water.

If I'm talking about the national budget in some advertised talk, and I look around during my lecture and see people very interested in the topic, should I say the majority of the population loves studying economics?

When there's a statistically significant imbalance between the sexes, sometimes it's because of discrimination, and sometimes it's because there are actual statistically significant difference physical and psychological difference between men and women,.

They could distinguish between the two, of course, but that would require thinking.

Actually, distinguishing between discrimination and actual systematic differences requires experimentation. We know that women do not do a great many athletic things as well as men, as a general rule, because lots of people have tried.

The fact that there are lots fewer women than men in tech suggests to me that there's likely discrimination going on, and that it would be worthwhile to find out. I keep remembering my son's middle school math club, which was something over half girls. From what I heard,

I've seen studies go either way. I've seen claims that women CAUSE more accidents (random braking etc) that they themselves don't get INTO the accident, but effect the people they had cut off etc (claims by traffic cops). I've watch women apply makeup while making lane-changes on 6-lane highways, or declare they waited long enough to cross a highway "they'll just have to stop". Personally come across as many accidents caused by hesitation as by aggression.